


Large and in Charge

by Ishti



Category: Aveyond
Genre: ...arguably, Action/Adventure, Canon Compliant, Found Family, Gen, Not Rhenegade Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 15:56:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21340852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ishti/pseuds/Ishti
Summary: For when you need a boost.
Relationships: Lars Tenobor & Mad Marge (Aveyond)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	Large and in Charge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plumesvertes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumesvertes/gifts).

> AN ISHTISAUR ALWAYS PAYS ITS DEBTS (even if it takes a while) here is ur fic Moonie it was such a pleasure 11/10 would Large again

"Lars! Ale, table two; smartly, ya lubber!"

Lars glowered at Marge's broad back, slamming down the grimy tap handle and catching frothy liquid in a metal tankard. Not caring that the stuff slopped over the sides, he stormed to table two and left the tankard there without a word, cloak swishing behind him. He was not getting paid for this.

The party had been at Veniara for a couple of days, enjoying the local delicacies of boxed fish and bananas. Just this morning, Rhen took Dameon, Te'ijal, Galahad, and Elini east to Ghalarah on the skudder to investigate reports of demon sightings. Lars had been left behind with Pirate John and Mad Marge at the Sour Ale Tavern. It was voluntary. For one, he thought the reports were bogus misdirection to lose them time. For another, Ghalarah could fry.

The door to the kitchen swung open, and Lars took a good sniff. If Marge was the one doing the frying, even Ghalarah would taste delicious.

_ "I ain't payin' you to stand around with your nose-holes flapping! Sling that rotgut!" _

Wide-eyed, Lars clenched his jaw and filled three cups with old, bottom-shelf liquor for the waving hands in the back of the room. _ You’re not paying me! _

With a back-cracking stretch, Pirate John burst through the front door. "Ooohh, my back. Good morning, friends, countrymen, Lars!"

Lars sighed through his nose. "It's easily noon," he huffed, for once agreeing with the glares of the bar patrons as he served their drinks. "Why the hell doesn't Marge make _ you _ work the bar?"

John laughed. "She tried that once!" Then, darkly, "And never again since."

"Less chatter!" barked Marge, bumping her way through the kitchen door by way of her derriere. She was toting four plates full of unidentifiable fried stuff on her brawny arms. The crest of her bushy hair nearly brushed the doorframe. "Four Thursday specials coming up!"

As Marge delivered the Thursday specials and John lounged against the bar, Lars poured another mugful of grog for the lady in the corner. "Is it almost break?" he grumbled, knowing none of the patrons cared what he said.

"Your shift just started half an hour ago, dishrag," shot Marge. "Get back behind the bar and start wiping something."

"Fine."

Lars grabbed a fog-grey glass tankard and a wet rag and began the thankless task he wouldn't have dreamed of doing a good month ago. Hell, he didn't get why he was doing it now. Rhen was the leader of their expedition, and he would laugh in her face if _ she _ordered him to do something like this.

Marge clapped him on the shoulder as she went back to the kitchen. He dipped the rag and continued wiping the glass.

"Feeling a little _ sunny, boy, _ are ya?" said John.

"What?"

"'Cause you're beamin'."

Lars whipped the rag at his face, eliciting an _ "augh!" _ as John jumped back, cheek splashed with dirty water.

The front door tinkled open and a pair of boots hastily rounded the corner to the bar. An agitated dwarf, more beard than man, seized John by the arm and gripped him like the last vine on Crumble Cliff.

"You! Can't you hear 'em coming?! You've got to go stop 'em! Fast!"

Flustered, John responded, "Uhh--"

"What's out there?" said Lars, springing into a ready stance. Finally, some action!

_ "The demons!" _

"Demons?!"

_ "Demons?!" _

Marge slammed the door open with her skull. _ "Demons!!" _

Two plates clattered to the bar, and Lars found himself swept forward by a powerfully chubby arm. Marge produced an axe from out of nowhere as they hurried out the tavern door.

"John, get your ass off that seat! You, plunk it down wherever; I'll be with you in a minute!"

The three heroes found themselves on the white-sanded beach with their backs to a door which someone immediately locked behind them.

A gigantic ship, its wood warped and its sails tattered and red, floated several dozen yards offshore in the glassy turquoise water. It was easily three times as large as Rhen’s little skudder. Lars tried to keep his jaw from hanging open. “H-how many demons do you think—?”

“One at a time,” snapped Marge, rolling back her shoulders. “That’s how many.”

She strode towards the beach, and John and Lars followed, one trailing his rapier in the sand, the other clutching his staff like a boy would clutch his mama’s skirts. The first demons cannonballed from the ship’s deck and gunports, their cheers and gleeful whoops audible from the shore. These weren’t flying demons, which was good news for the trio.

They did swim _ fast, _ though. The first demons were onshore before Lars could count backwards from thirty. Blades spun and evocations rang through the air, lightning and stone crashing from the sky to silence the shrieking imps. John’s technique, loose and quick, kept the demons flummoxed while he darted into combat only to run away again.

“All right, lads!” barked Marge, her stance wide as the wet sand licked at her boots. “We’ve got nothing to worry about! Between my muscle and Lars’ magic, and—”

“My mind, might, and moxie, right?” chimed in John.

_ “You’re a very funny man, aren’t you!” _hollered Marge, threatening him with her axe.

“I’ll be here all week, unless you kick my ass!”

Lars blasted another demon to pieces as it snuck up on Marge. “We have to beat them back to the ship and destroy it,” he shouted. Marge nodded, unfazed.

Demons were pouring from the ship now, more at once than Lars could count. He wouldn’t be surprised if there were a portal somewhere aboard that ship. _ Why would they send a force like this to Veniara? Could someone have tipped them off that we were staying here? _

He didn’t have time to wonder as a demon clobbered him from behind, knocking him forward into Marge. With a faceful of sand, he could only wave his arms around ineffectually while Marge wrestled the thing to the ground and choked out its lights above him. He stood up and coughed uncontrollably.

“Th-th—”

“Watch your damn six, kid!” snapped Marge before running forward into the shallows.

Lars wiped his face off with his sleeve, gave his head a good shake, and advanced into the water with his companions. They couldn’t lose a second. With a low wave of his arms and a concentrated mumble, he summoned a quake in the sandy seafloor so strong that several demons were sucked into a fissure the width of Marge’s long table. Lars held his stance against the water and earth as they pulled inward to fill the space.

As Lars waded forward, his robes billowed out behind him, the bottoms of his sleeves soaking through. He held his arms as high as he could, trying to keep his staff above water as he cast at the demons who were perfectly content to wreak havoc floating on the water or treading the ocean floor. Waves threatened to unbalance him as he froze demons in place. The water grew deeper, hampering his range of motion. He was up to his shoulders in the drink and struggling to cast anything when suddenly, he wasn’t anymore.

Heavy and dripping with brine, Lars scrambled for land beneath his feet and nearly fell backwards when he realized there was none. Mad Marge held him near his knees just above the surface of the water, his thighs resting on her broad shoulders and his robes hiked up uncomfortably behind her beehive of hair. He grabbed at it with one hand and she snarled.

“Watch it back there!”

“It’s not my fault!” he snapped back, still shaken, sitting up high on Marge’s shoulders. “You just—”

And then a massive horned demon leaped at them from underwater, and Lars blasted it to green, gooey pieces in midair.

Marge chuckled heartily, threatening to destabilize Lars. She slogged forward into the horde of demons one leg at a time, gripping the hilt of her axe against Lars’ calf beneath the water’s surface.

She looked up at him, and he looked down at her, and then without a word spoken, the two of them hollered at the top of their lungs, raising their weapons for battle as Marge charged ahead.

One hand on his staff and the other gesturing freely without fear of imbalance, Lars cut swathes through the infernal troops, clearing the coast around the Sour Ale Tavern. John hopped along a ridge of half-submerged rocks, tangling with the beasts who thought they could sneak around the long way. Marge let go of Lars’ leg once or twice, when a demon got too close, and she cut them away effortlessly as if she were trained to fight underwater. The sky flashed with arcane lightning, and balls of fire pulsed from Lars’ glowing staff, its stone stretched high above the sparkling sea.

Lars cleaved them a path to the demon ship, pounding mana vials hidden in a bandolier beneath his robes. Marge and John were up to their chins in water, Marge’s mitts gripping Lars’ thighs tight, when Lars yelled, “I got this!”

Summoning all the energy he had left and squeezing Marge’s neck a bit to boot—_ ”You’re suffocating me, you damn cabbage” _\--Lars swirled his hands over and over, drawing wrath from the sky and the sea simultaneously. A tornado touched down on the deck of the ship, catching the mainmast first and sending it splintering haphazardly about, while the ocean below the ship rose up around it, seeping into every gap in the wood. The demons began shrieking in their foul tongue, but were soon drowned out both by the howling of the whirlwind and by the hunting surf. The ship began to crack and compact under dual pressure, until finally, it exploded into a mass of wood chips and severed limbs. The dark portal in the bowels of the ship twisted out of existence as soon as it had no ship left to occupy.

“Hey, Lars?”

“What, John?”

“I, uh, take back what I said about the drapes you chose for the mansion in Sedona. They’re actually very pretty.”

“Let’s get out of the damn water and feed my customers,” demanded Marge, and she marched back against the tide to deposit Lars on solid ground.

Lars shook water out of his bangs and blinked hard a few times. He looked up--about seven inches up, to be exact--and he saw a mussel dangling from Marge’s hair. After a moment’s hesitation, he jogged after her and, with a forceful jump, managed to grab the critter and yank it off.

_ “Ow!” _ yelled Marge, spinning around. “You little--gimme that.”

“What—”

Lars was too slow to react as Marge snatched the mussel from his hand. “Aha. Little sucker. Really clung to me in there, huh.”

“Um, you’re welcome.”

“I meant you, green bean.”

“Hey, we just saved the whole island!” protested Lars. “Especially me!”

“Never said I was angry.” Marge smiled, her eyes softening as she paused under the shade of the torn tavern awning. She unlocked the rickety door. “I always had a good, nutty head on my shoulders. Today, you could say I had two.”

Lars straightened his back and let himself beam as he stepped back into the Sour Ale Tavern, not caring who saw.

**Author's Note:**

> someone draw me their crystal gem fusion please


End file.
